FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

Minetest doesn't offer a particularly unique gaming experience. Sure, the mod support is nice, but it doesn't help sell the game to players. It doesn't give our game a unique experience.

I'd like your ideas on how we can make Minetest unique, a game worth playing.

Confusion of Identity

The most common response I get when showing a screenshot of Minetest is: "Is that a crappy texture pack for Minecraft?"

Why does this happen?

• Similar size cubes, 1m by 1m
• Similar textures (even different ones could be confused as a different texture pack)
• Hotbar in the same position, similar looks

Why is this a problem?

• People expect an exact clone, and are disappointed to find out that their are no mobs / insert-feature-here.
• People call us a rip off and never try the game, just by the looks. ("How is this legal?? Why doesn't MC sue?")

minetest_game is still important

While it should be promoted that players use mods, minetest_game should still be a well polished and unique game. It is the entry point into the game. If they open up Minetest, and dislike their first impressions, they won't stay. No amount of education will change that.

But "they can just install a mod" is not expectable when it limits the polish of minetest_game. Minetest_game should be a playable game in its own right.

My suggestions

• Ambient sounds on the client's side. (Clients look around for sound emitting nodes, rather than servers telling them to play sounds.) Ambient sounds should still be registered on the server side as mods.
• Give Minetest some meaning:
  
  • SciFi / Alien story (links in with 'test')
    
    • Will still be on an Earth like world, but some nodes and items can be found which are alien.
    • Alien artifacts. Make Mese an alien crystal, as celeron55 once suggest, iirc
    • Alien goo, underground temples with booby traps.
  • Test you building skills, your adventure skills, your intelligence.
• Some way of adding a scientific viewpoint. Chemistry? Idk

I'll probably add more / refine this viewpoint later.

+1 to Chemistry. There was a mod that looked promising but it sadly was dropped. I would like to do it myself, but there is just not enough time.

Also, I remember the hud bar being over on the left side in some old screenshots. What happened to that?

Next, Wuzzy's Tutorial should be included. Yes, I know this has been discussed before, but the fact is that his tutorial simply adds a great aspect to the game. And, I for one will always look at a tutorial before I play. Also, I have seen some idiot YouTubers go around and play games without using the tutorial, and they look like complete idiots. If there was to be official support for it, then there probably would be some more people coming to Minetest and actually understanding what the heck Minetest is about. And if they don't care about the tutorial, then they can do things on my suggestion below...

To top it all off, I suggest this: There should be a couple different subgames bundled with Minetest:
1) minetest_game, which is polished up.
2) A fantasy sort of quest-ish game.
3) A sci-fi sort of game like Ruben suggested.

This way, there is a large range of playable modes, and people are satisfied with vanilla Minetest.

+1 to: "Some way of adding a scientific viewpoint."

1)Tons of artificial intelligences very bad, designed to scale very light in terms of performance.
explore, for mè, must be pure survival.

2)for mè also side "role play" is crucial.

I think the mapgen has an important role, and I think mapgen v6 is really disappointing.
The mapgen has a huge potential. I'm sure we can make a really good mapgen, generating very various landscapes, with a lot of details.

"SciFi / Alien story (links in with 'test')"

If anyone's noticed BFD, there's actually a giantic roadmap I've been working on. The mapgen, textures, etc.

Eventually there will even be mecha mobs, which fight for you, or against other players if they are set to.

Not to mention usage of Eden's materials, as well as the deathly.

I plan on adding tons more biomes into the mix to make BFD more realistic mapgen wise. Once I have finished the core parts of BFD, tools, ores, mapgen, then I can start on these experimental ideas, including mining turtles, MineMIDI, mechanical mobs stated above, auto turrets, maybe more.

I just don't have the development power to do it by myself, which is why my development speed is low.

EDIT:

At some point I'm going to be placing lots of specialised nodes at each edge of the world, which looks suspiciously like forcefields.

I was going to mention that BfD is a good role model in terms of polish, but then I remembered I hadn't played it in a while, so it might have changed.

rubenwardy wrote:I was going to mention that BfD is a good role model in terms of polish, but then I remembered I hadn't played it in a while, so it might have changed.

It's far better and smoother to play than it was back during the prototype stage.

Jordach wrote:including mining turtles

What we need are mineturtles.

Casimir wrote:

Jordach wrote:including mining turtles

What we need are mineturtles.

Did we just find a creeper replacement??

Also; these things animate:



EDIT:

Here's a quickie model of a MineTurtle:

Go further into the survival aspect, instead of punching a tree at the start you should be looking for rocks to bash together , then you can use the shard to cut at trees. add thirst and water purification

MineTurtle is a very funny idea, and we need an alternative to "creepers" :D

I like your turtle model Jordach :)

Once again , I'm agree with Wuzzy, especially part with client side sound mod and role play things . also a alternative to creeper is really nice too and your model of turtle is pretty great !

Also I'm agree to get the Wuzzy's. Tutorial integrated by default ...

Btw it's a great thing to expose your opinion because , each time I try to do this here, it's always a dead end ...

This topic is extremely interesting and could play a key role in the future of the game.

It will be very good to put at least 3-4 subgames by default : the current minetest_game, perhaps named Vanilla ; a Sci-Fi one, with mobs, alien stuff, technic stuff, etc. ; a natural one, with mods like Plantlife, numerous animals, monsters, and a beautiful mapgen with valleys, rivers and mountains ; and eventually a subgame like Wasteland, that puts the player in a particular situation.

By working together, Minetest could be one of the best games of the history. Really.

Immersion:

The ambiance immersion mod really stands out for me. I think sound is the games biggest asset and opportunity, because as we know the graphics won't add much to immersion factor. Immersion is important because you want to feel like you are there, like it is real. If you feel like a game is real, and a place you like, you will explore and stay in that environment longer and identify with it.

Storytelling:
What is the story? Who is the character? The game feels empty. No characters, no story, you have no real reason for being there. Why even stay?
For example, I am making a mod that will have the character talk to himself. This will tell the story as well as make you feel connected to the character.


Character building and progression:
Obviously no story means no progression. What is the goal? Get off the planet? Build a civilization? Go to war? Terraform the planet? (see Dune) In a nutshell, why do I wan't to spend 800+ hours playing it? I would love to see some sort of random finds/drops of some sort. Most games use this mechanic for good reason. People love collecting things! As far as building your character, give them cool stuff to look forward to crafting, like wings, or teleporters, or giant drills or insert epic item here. Case and point, you want fly privs? Craft some wings dude!

**How friggin cool would a Dune mod be with working sandworm!

Yes, i'm agreed with you leeminer, Immersion is really important to get players love the game...

It's sad, that the game has too many potential that should be exploited, but I hope in 2015, minetest will become very popular ^^

For people looking for this ambience mod, it's here.
I agree, it really enhances the game. It could be a little improved, but it's already awesome.

The ambience mod is too slow and lags too much on multiplayer. We need client side ambience.

@rubenwardy some times ago, i opened a topic which partially talk about that here : viewtopic.php?f=5&t=10772&p=165093#p165093

But i didn't got more informations...

That's probably because you were talking about music, it seems, rather than sounds. Im talking about leaves russling, waves, birds, insects.

yes yes, but at the end, I talk about sound loaded by client rather than server, look at the last post

rubenwardy wrote:That's probably because you were talking about music, it seems, rather than sounds. Im talking about leaves russling, waves, birds, insects.

I have a solution that doesn't require using it's ABM heavy calculations.

rubenwardy wrote:That's probably because you were talking about music, it seems, rather than sounds. Im talking about leaves russling, waves, birds, insects.

Neuromacer's ambience mod also includes sounds : 4 differents birds, waves, bats and water drops in caves, snakes, etc.
But it's true that it's slow (see this page of the topic) and it will better have its place on client side.

It will be a massive rewrite of the core but it's needed.

"It will be a massive rewrite of the core but it's needed."

Not sure how much time it would take, but as far as a change with the biggest impact, I think this would be it.

It wouldn't be a massive rewrite. We're not adding a client side API, we're adding ambient sounds support.

Well I say we take a vote.

How do we do that? ;)

We should also try to distance ourselves from Minecraft, I read the forums and see comparisons to Minecraft everywhere... This isn't just from new players, seasoned modders and I believe even a dev. I do believe Minetest can grow into something great but we have to stop aiming to be minecraft, a community doesn't grow by envying another a community grows but enforcing its identity and looking good to outsiders.....
One of the first things I see when I open up Minetest is an unattractive menu and if it wasn't for the fact that I came to Minetest to mod I would have closed the game an carried on with my life.

When I user opens up a game the first thing they see is the buttons, the intro... this is the first impression, the icon is very pretty, cartoony and all.... The GUI should include more smooth buttons.

I find that most attractive menus have buttons on the sides, and menus in the middle, think like GTA, COD, etc.

I know it's not a lot but when the base game is very barebones at least the menu can look pretty and encourage people to do research before brushing it of as a bad game.

sarusian wrote:We should also try to distance ourselves from Minecraft, I read the forums and see comparisons to Minecraft everywhere... This isn't just from new players, seasoned modders and I believe even a dev. I do believe Minetest can grow into something great but we have to stop aiming to be minecraft, a community doesn't grow by envying another a community grows but enforcing its identity and looking good to outsiders.....

Exactely, it's not because "this feature already exists in Minecraft" that we must feel obliged to make it !

rubenwardy wrote:The most common response I get when showing a screenshot of Minetest is: "Is that a crappy texture pack for Minecraft?"

In fact, this is the same problem. As long as we try to reproduce Minecraft, MT will be a copy of MC, or even worse, il could be called the "Minecraft of the poor".
We need to stand out, not to exceed MC, but to eliminate the feeling of competition between the 2 games.

philipbenr wrote:Wuzzy's Tutorial should be included. Yes, I know this has been discussed before, but the fact is that his tutorial simply adds a great aspect to the game. And, I for one will always look at a tutorial before I play.

I've tried this tutorial, it works well and could really help new players. I could even contribute to the French translation.

Yeah Gael, well said.

I hope to see at least the tutorial in the default package soon.

And even more so, I'd love to see ambiance implimented. The great thing about Minetest is that right now its very solid and the sky is the limit. I do strongly agree that there needs to be something (not sure what) that we can do to differentiate between minecraft.


From wiki

Future development

To give more examples of the possibilities of the Minetest engine it had been discussed to include more example games in the download archive. The only other game that was included in the 0.4.9 versions of Minetest was Minimal, which is only recommended for testing purposes. Games suggested as example games[4] have been Dwarves, PilzTest, Nostalgia, Realtest, Eden or a game based on the Ethereal mod. More recently BFD, Minetest NeXt and Carbone have been considered among others. The idea is to showcase a variety of different gameplay, environment and atmosphere concepts.

leeminer wrote:I do strongly agree that there needs to be something (not sure what) that we can do to differentiate between minecraft.


From wiki

Future development

... The idea is to showcase a variety of different gameplay, environment and atmosphere concepts.

+1. Hope this will be realized.

Minetest should be a game which is played instead of Minecraft, rather than as a substitute when you can't afford Minecraft. We need unique features and a highly polished user experience. It's something to aim towards, even if we never get there. Every step is good.